Rachel Weston is an Agile Coach with Rally Software in Boulder, Colorado. She has over nine years of experience in the software development industry working with both in-house IT and product development teams and as a consultant working on software and strategic initiatives. Rachel has held many functional roles within software teams, including IT Manager and Director, Project Manager, Business Analyst, Tech Writer and QA.

Throughout her career, she has worked actively to improve processes in order to create a more collaborative, successful and therefore satisfying working environment. She is passionate about the positive changes Agile methods can enable for software development teams and their customers. Rachel holds a Masters in Linguistics with a specialization in Computational Linguistics from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and received her Bachelor’s degree in Mass Communications from the University of California Berkeley.

(One of my students once said to me- Hmm! That's not a very good picture of you. Sigh… Good thing it's on the Rally website!!!)

On the personal side: I'm a native of Boulder, Colorado and am looking forward to experiencing the lodge - a place I have never been. I like to ski, garden, camp, cook, and I am getting married in September.

For this gathering, I am looking forward to the following:

1. Discussing the risks of change fatigue when we inspect and adapt with reckless abandon.

2. Learning new retrospective and facilitation techniques from this great group of people.

3. Good discussion around how we can validate the changes we are helping teams make (instead of just changing willy-nilly with no real direction).